It should also be pointed out that, in order to found the decision issued in this report,
the Commission does not refer to the provisional measures that, on May 28, 2010, had
ordered the State to refrain from extraditing Wong Ho Wing until December 17, 2010,
to allow the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to examine and decide on
petition P-366-09 lodged before that organ on March 27, 2009. In other words, the
report does not consider that the possible extradition of Wong Ho Wing, and therefore
the corresponding proceedings, had been suspended on the orders of the Court at the
request of the Commission itself.
III.
CONSIDERATIONS ON THE JUDGMENT
The Judgment refers to two of the arguments made by the State with regard to its
preliminary objection. One consists in the fact that, when the initial petition was lodged, the
domestic remedies had not been exhausted, and the other to the fact that, when deciding
on admissibility, the Commission did not take into account that other applications for
habeas corpus filed by the representative were being processed.38 This opinion is only
concerned with the first argument, regarding which the Judgment gives four reasons to
reject the preliminary objection filed by the State based on the petitioner’s failure to comply
with the obligation to exhaust the domestic remedies before lodging the petition.
The first reason is stated as follows: “[a]s the State mentioned, the decisions that,
according to the Commission, exhausted the domestic remedies were adopted after the
initial petition had been lodged. However, the Court notes that, by requiring that
“admission by the Commission of a petition or communication […] shall be subject to” the
said exhaustion (underlining added), Article 46 of the American Convention, should be
interpreted in the sense that exhaustion of the remedies is required when deciding on the
admissibility of the petition and not when this is lodged.”39
Thus, the Judgment is aligned with the Court’s invariable position that the requirement of
prior exhaustion of domestic remedies must be met at the time the Commission takes a
decision on the admissibility of the petition and not when the latter is lodged; a position
that, as indicated in Part I of this document – and especially in its sections B, C and D –
this opinion does not share, above all, because it runs counter to the express provisions of
Article 46(1)(a): by disregarding the qualifying term of “lodged” attributed to the petition in
order to indicate that it is with regard to the petition as lodged that the admissibility or
inadmissibility should be declared; by not weighing the State’s observations and the fact
that these could only refer to the petition as lodged, which established the adversarial
proceedings on the matter, and regarding which the Commission should take a decision
and, lastly, by not considering that, in order to decide on admissibility, the Commission
should “verify,” – that is, confirm – that the requirement of prior exhaustion of domestic
remedies has been met, which, undoubtedly and consequently, should have occurred
before that moment.
It should also be noted that the Judgment appears to contain a contradiction because,
when setting out the Court’s second reason for rejecting the preliminary objection in
question, it affirms that: “[o]nce the petition has been forwarded to the State, the
admissibility stage starts and, consequently, the adversarial proceedings on whether the
38
Cf. para. 23 of the Judgment.
39
Para. 25 of the Judgment.
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